How to Get More Joy with Martha Beck
February 3, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, love bugs. I don’t know why I just called you love bugs actually, but I’m not going to redo it. That’s what I call my family. And so, today you are love bugs. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are super psyched about today because the response to the last episode was so huge because we were with Ms. Martha Beck, who is reminding us about how to return to our wild and with a little more integrity, just meaning, integrated. So our outer lives and our inner selves are the same damn thing for once in our lives, and because acting is so exhausting.
Glennon Doyle:
And so, we’re trying to figure out how to just be the parts of Untamed that people responded to the most, I think, were this idea that there is a part of us that knows how to live and what we were meant for, but that we get that part drowned out by the expectations of our culture, and by family, and by religion, and by all of these forces that tame us into forgetting our wild. And so, so much of my life was transformed when I kind of figured out how to get back to that knowing. And I know that’s true, but I’m not always amazing at describing how to do it perfectly, so we brought in a human who knows how to describe how to get back to our knowing. And her name is Martha Beck. Martha is back. Hello, Martha.
Martha Beck:
Hello, love bug.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Thanks for that. I needed that. Do you mind, Martha, if we just jump into these questions because they’re more beautiful, and fascinating, and brilliant than you can imagine this podsquad that we do life with just always brings the ringers. So let’s just jump in. Is that okay?
Martha Beck:
Oh, love it.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s do it.
Anna:
My name is Anna, and I am wondering about whether or not you think selfishness is real. And by that I mean, as someone who has recently made the decision to stop drinking, and who is really working on prioritizing myself, and learning how to get in touch with what it is that I really like to do and how I like to spend my time, I’ve come up against a lot of moments of not knowing when it’s okay to just do what I want to do, which sometimes means not leaving the apartment for several days, and times when I should prioritize other people’s feelings and what they want me to do. I guess I’m just wondering, what do you think about the word selfish? When is it important to prioritize other people’s needs, wants, and feelings, and when is it okay to prioritize yours?
Martha Beck:
All right. So, selfishness is definitely a thing, and it happens when someone is starved of self. So if somebody holds a pillow over your face, you are thinking only about breath, but if you are able to breathe freely, you don’t think about it at all. If you are able to be yourself, you don’t think about it at all. So there are people who are very selfish, and they’re mean and awful, and you can be guaranteed that that person’s self is being stifled to the point where they cannot think about anything else. And they can be really toxic, but it’s always because they’ve been robbed of their true selves. So, a lot of the time, like when you drink, it’s probably partly because you’ve lost yourself and you need to anesthetize the pain because the separation from self is unbearable.
Martha Beck:
So, what I would say is, first thing is, restore your understanding of self by pouring as much nourishment into your true self as possible. And notice this, when you give yourself something, when you prioritize yourself, this sounds so simple and it’s very sort of standard magazine things, but I get a massage once a week, I stopped during the pandemic for a while then I started again. It was amazing how much more energy I had others when I knew that I got that for myself. So, that was something myself needed to be happy. And the moment I prioritize self, what happens is that you’re breathing freely now, and instead of saying, “How do I get my breath back? How do I get myself back?”, you see other people for the first time and you go, “Oh, I want to interact. I want to give things to them.” It’s joyful.
Martha Beck:
So, coming out of drinking and stuff, it probably means you were already in a life where you were starved of self. So I would say, you are your first priority, like 90% of your energy should go to just understanding who you are and what it takes for you to be happy. And you will have to go and do things for your real life. Like you’re going to have to go through a recovery period of self, and you’ll notice that you’ll feel a little more energetic toward others every time you give your self something it genuinely needs. When you go overboard and start grabbing for things, it won’t feel good to yourself because that’s not the true nature of you, you are made of love.
Martha Beck:
So, to give you an example of how to sort of live through the adjustment period, think about driving in a place where you’ve got your Google Map on your car, but you’ve never been to the place, right? So you want to sort of look at the surroundings, you want to look at the traffic, you want to see where you’re going, but rather than admiring the view, your eyes are flicking down to the Google Map over and over and over, let’s say it’s a really intricate route. You’re going to your internal navigation system over and over and over, and you notice what you’re moving through, but most of your attention has to be, where does my self want to go now? Like, what feels warm, free, and joyful now, okay? That’s your navigation system and it’s internal. So, 99% of your attention should be internal until you get to know the routes. Once you’ve traveled with it, and the GPS has told you which way to go, you’re going to start saying, “Oh, I know that building, this is where that river is.”, and you can start just completely taking your attention off the navigation system because you’ve internalized it, that’s when your entire life will be selfless. You will go from feeling completely selfish to being completely selfless. So, first get your breath back, and always navigate by checking inside first.
Abby Wambach:
Holy shit.
Glennon Doyle:
Abby, You are having a big reaction to that one, huh?
Abby Wambach:
Yep. Oh my goodness.
Glennon Doyle:
The idea of selfishness being starved of self and desperately needing it, that’s why people who live as martyrs are always the most bitter and angry.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. And superstars, I never experienced Abby as bitter or angry at all, but I’ve worked with professional athletes who talk about not having a self. Everybody thinks that you’re up on a pedestal and you should feel great, but in fact, you are a commodity, bought, sold, traded, it is, tell me where I’m wrong, Abby, but it’s a rough life.
Abby Wambach:
Listen, it’s why I become an addict at the end of my career because it felt… And I say this now, I mean, all of this is making perfect sense, I say, I was so selfish. It was the only way I could be in that life. Everything I thought about was myself. And the fact that you just saved me a lot of money in therapy, thank you for that.
Martha Beck:
Aw, thank you.
Abby Wambach:
I thought that that was only my experience, but it was proof that my spirit probably wasn’t doing what I wanted to be doing.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. You weren’t free at all.
Abby Wambach:
I was not free at all.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s the idea of we, especially women, I think we just think that we can get to ourselves at the end of the list. Like if we do everything for everyone else, then we’ll put ourselves at the end and check that box, but that means that the energy with which we’re doing things for other people is actually angry energy, and tired, and exhausted energy.
Martha Beck:
I mean, eventually, it will simply run out. Like that is not the way the system’s supposed to work. I met one therapist who said, “All of our energy should be 75% focused inward all the time, up to 100% when we’re alone. But even if you’re in a room with people who desperately need you…” And this is a woman who worked on hospital wards where there were a lot of really needy people, and she said, “If more than 75% of my attention got outside body, I would burn out like that.” So, just notice the moment you feel burnout, focus on your internal navigation, go, “Okay, what do I need now? I need to go outside. I need to breathe fresh air. I need to not talk to that person. I need to call that person.”
Amanda Doyle:
Is this selfishness the same concept that you describe in the book of this self-sabotage? Like, are they two sides of the same coin? As in like, if you’re not, like that egg scene blew my mind. Is it, if you’re not getting your needs met it’s going to come out?
Martha Beck:
If you’re not free to follow your nature, you will start to do dysfunctional things to sabotage the program that is taking you out of your nature. So the egg story was that I’m not supposed to eat eggs, my system doesn’t handle them well. And one day I was actually staying at Liz Gilbert’s apartment in Manhattan, and I cleaned up the apartment. I took everything to the laundromat, cleaned it, then I went to a diner and sat down, and just ordered these eggs and just hoovered them. And it’s not hard for me to resist eggs, they’re not like… And I’m like, “Why am I doing this?”
Martha Beck:
I went through it, and it was that I’d gone to the laundromat, I came back in, it was hot outside, and there was this feeling of, “Oh, I really wish I could just sit down in the cool and rest for 10 minutes.” And then I thought, “No, when the going gets hard, the tough get going. I’ve got to keep working.” Which was stupid. It would’ve been 10 minutes of giving my body the rest it needed, but carrying on and never stopping is one of my consensus cultural values. So, I did that, and at that moment, I began to skid off the rails. And by the time I got to the diner, I don’t even love eggs or anything, it was just like, “Screw you world, I’m going to break the rules. Watch me eat these eggs. That’ll show you.” And it just makes me sick.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, I do know. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
God, it’s so true. It’s same reason why we all like scroll for 14 hours a night, even though we desperately need to go to sleep because we’re not giving ourselves the rest in other way, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Does self denial for no reason create self-sabotage?
Martha Beck:
Yes, absolutely. In fact, it’s not self-sabotage, it’s your true nature trying trick the system into letting you be free.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That’s exactly it.
Martha Beck:
It’s the truth, self-sabotage is the truth trying to get you out of the cultural matrix that has taken your freedom.
Glennon Doyle:
So it’s like, I’m going to drink this whole bottle of wine because I don’t want to be in so much pain from doing all the shit in my sober day that I know I shouldn’t be doing because it hurts my feelings.
Martha Beck:
Exactly. Exactly. I’m going to do what I absolutely loathe all day long because I am a good person, and then I’m going to drink six bottles of Jack Daniel’s because screw you, world. And the next day you’re hospitalized and things aren’t going well. But you can’t outfox your true nature, it’ll be the last person standing. It will kill you if necessary to get you out of the wrong life, I’ve seen that happen. So maybe, don’t wait till it kills you, just start doing what you want right now.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. Let’s hear from Kathy.
Kathy:
Hi, Glennon and sister. My name is Kathy. I have been through a lot of traumatic events in my adult life. I’m a cancer survivor, I had cancer when I was 29. I had infidelity in my marriage. I have neuroatypical children. I’m a musician, and right before my album came out, both of my eardrums ruptured, and I haven’t been able to promote it the way that I wanted to, had a lot of traumatic things happen. And I used to have a very intricate knowing, like I could sense when things were off, I could sense when people were lying to me, I could sense when energy shifted in a room, and now I don’t trust that part of me, that inner knowing, so much because fear, and trauma-based fear, and my knowing often feel the same. And so, I was just wondering if you had some kind of a trick or a way of deciphering between what is your knowing that you should listen to and what is fear that you just need to breathe through and heal through. Thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m with Kathy, what’s trauma, what’s her knowing, how does our trauma affect our nature?
Martha Beck:
Okay. So, there are only two things that will take you off your true nature, because all babies are born knowing who they are and knowing what they want. And we abandon what we know about ourselves when we are pressured to do things by sort of socialization, people are nice to us when we smile and they don’t like it when we cry. And then the other thing is trauma, and that can happen, you can just fall off a cliff, nobody needs to be involved, and it’s very, very traumatizing, and it can change the way you go. The reason that this happens is that humans have the ability to imagine future things, and other animals don’t have as much imagination. So, they don’t lose themselves because of trauma. They’re just like, “Oh my God, I fell off a cliff, that sucked.” But a human can start to think things like the whole world is unsafe. Like, here comes one trauma, another trauma, another trauma, nothing is safe.
Martha Beck:
So then you tell yourself that message, nothing is safe, and that actually is not true to the deepest part of you, to the deepest part of you. And I’ve worked with many, many people, and I’ve had a lot of trauma in my early life, and really, really warped my personality because of trauma. And I’ve gotten through it to the other side, and what happens, I remember once for example, I had to have surgery without anesthesia once, it was an emergency surgery and they gave me a local. I am telling you, in TV when people don’t scream when that stuff happens, it’s not real, there’s literally no way you can not scream. It was one of the most traumatic events in my life, and it left me very shaken. Every trauma makes you think the whole world is a dangerous place. And after all you’re going to die, we know that, other animals don’t. So, the world can get very, very dark. And psychologists have found that people get this image of the world as dark, inert, and meaningless. And that it’s a choice, it affects the brain a certain way, and once you’re there, everything frightens you. And what this does is it takes away your ability to trust the truth inside you, so, all you feel is the fear.
Martha Beck:
So, I was dealing with surgery thing, and I went to see someone who said, “Okay, we’re going to go into this, and you’re going to tell me why you were safe during this experience.” And I was like, “I wasn’t safe, it was excruciating pain.” And they went, “No, no, no, go in.” So I went into the experience, and I was shaking, and I was sweating, and they said, “No, what’s the worst part? What’s the worst part?” And I realized that the pain itself was not as bad as hearing the surgeon pick up an instrument. It was me anticipating what was coming. And it was my consciousness that was frightened. If I had been unconscious, my body would’ve been fine with being cut up, right? So, what I realized from that is, oh, it’s my consciousness expecting to be hurt that is making me so completely off track, and the whole world was dangerous. And when you think the world is dangerous, you run from everything and you run right into brick walls. I mean, you do things that put you in danger because you’re off your trust scale.
Martha Beck:
Once I realized that it was my mind that was causing that suffering and not the knife as much, I slipped into this place where I thought, “Oh, what an incredible experience. Here was this surgeon who was willing to operate on me while I was screaming, and he was so skilled and so brave that he did it without anesthesia. And I was so lovingly cared for by the people in that room when I was at my absolute, the rock bottom of suffering.” And suddenly the whole thing transformed inside me into the experience of the world being, and this is the same research that says that you go from the world being dark, inert, and meaningless, and then there’s a flip, and the world, as you get to the other side of your trauma is safe, enticing, and alive.
Martha Beck:
So right in the middle of processing that trauma, everything in my world flipped, and I lost my fear of physical pain and I lost my fear of death because of the trauma I’d gone through. And suddenly I thought, “If I can survive that, then the world is safe for me, and I started to regain trust, and I would just say, the world is safe, enticing, and alive, and then I would look around for the evidence of that, and I could always find it, but always. And little by little, I built back my trust in the world. So, that’s what I would ask you to do is go into the trauma, find the place inside the trauma where you were actually okay, and start building on the part of you that knew you were okay. And you will find it. I promise you, you will find it.
Glennon Doyle:
Start building on the part of you that knew you were okay, that’s so good. Okay. Let’s move on. You’re good? Everyone’s good?
Martha Beck:
It’s beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s move on to Shannon. And Martha, I just want to say, if people are doing it, one of the things I respect about your book so much is that you’re always telling people, like, if it’s a very serious trauma, we get help. We explore these things with someone who will walk us through it.
Martha Beck:
Yeah, I did that with a therapist.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, right, with a therapist.
Martha Beck:
I actually have one thing I want to say about that for those very people, and I know what it’s like to not be able to find the part that was okay. So here’s an exercise I put in my book that I’d really like you to try right now, because what I was giving you is a big picture, but now here’s what I want you to do, wherever you are, see if you can get relaxed in a relaxed physical position, and as you breathe in, think, I can allow everything in the universe to be the way it is right now. Okay. So, I’m okay breathing in. All right. Now, as I breathe out, I’m going to drop my resistance to reality being as it is right now, not in five seconds, now. So you breathe in and you allow things to be as they are right now, you breathe out and you stop resisting.
Martha Beck:
You breathe in and you breathe out, and you surrender and allow, and surrender and allow. And then this moment becomes the haven that is okay, just this moment. And from there, you’ll start to feel your way into the trauma with help from a skilled counselor, and you’ll find that moment is always there. It’s always there, it will always be there, so use it right now.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s about the starting place.
Martha Beck:
It’s a starting place.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’re saying it’s too much to go back and find the okayness in the trauma, you can start right now.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. So I really don’t want to sound [inaudible 00:21:16], like, oh, it’s so easy, just find the happiness, turn your frow upside down. I mean, because that is pure unfiltered bullshit. But right now you’re breathing in, breathing out in the universe as it is, and it’s okay in every moment of your life, including the moment of your death, will be that way.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Retweet and amen. Okay. Let’s go to Shannon.
Shannon:
Hi, Glennon and Amanda. I’m Shannon. I’m 32, and I’m struggling with the decision to have kids. My whole life I assumed I would have kids, but I never really thought about it until I got married three years ago. When faced with the reality of what that decision would mean, my anxiety came raging in full force, panic attacks and all. And what I can’t figure out is, do I truly not want to have children, or is it just my anxiety telling me it will be too scary and too hard. And, of course, these thoughts are alongside the pressure I feel from society and family and friends that having a family is the right thing to do. Luckily, none of that pressure is from my partner who is an angel on earth. But I guess my question for you is, how do you find and trust your knowing when there are so many other voices in your head, or how do I make the right decision based on my own truth and not just based out of fear? Thanks.
Martha Beck:
Here’s what I always tell people, if you’re afraid to do something, but you also really want it, imagine standing on a high board over a pool on a very hot day, and the water is sparkling and blue, but it’s way down there and it’s scary to jump, but you really want to be in that water. So there’s this conflict between the longing to be cool and the fear of the fall. Now imagine that you’re on the same high dive, same hot day, but what you’re looking down at is a pool of toxic sludge, like it stinks, you can smell it from where you are, so you don’t want the fall, and you also are just revolted by the whole idea of being down there. If your fear and your longing conflict, choose your longing no matter what anybody else says. If you long for a life of travel free from children where you can do anything you want, go with that no matter what pressures are placed on you. But if you long to have children and then something comes up and says, but I can’t do it well enough, I’m not good enough, that’s social voices coming in and conflicting with your heart. So, always go with your longing no matter how frightened you are, and you’ll always find the right path.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I love that, because I didn’t actually hear any longing in Shannon’s paragraph.
Martha Beck:
Mm-mm (negative). Nope.
Glennon Doyle:
It was all like, I was kind of like not wanting it, and then I really had to think about it, and then I had anxiety attack, so, should I do it?
Amanda Doyle:
She was like, first, I was like, no, and then I was like, hell no, and then I was like, for Christ’s sake, no.
Glennon Doyle:
So, Martha, should I do it? Yeah. That’s how powerful societal pressure is especially for a woman to have kids. I mean my friends who do not have kids, the stories they tell me about the things people say to them and the way the culture gets so angry when a woman decides she doesn’t want to have children is like, wow, if you have fear and you have longing, go towards the longing.
Martha Beck:
Always go with your longing.
Glennon Doyle:
Can I just ask you one thing? How do you talk to, I’m asking for a friend, of course, how do you talk to people who have also actually really have chronic anxiety?
Martha Beck:
Oh my God, I have chronic anxiety. Are you kidding me?
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, great. So how do you know between your chronic anxiety self, whether it’s a good, because, Martha, like everything can look to me like toxic sludge sometimes is what I’m trying to say.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. And that’s a signal that it’s time to rest.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. When everything looks like toxic sludge, you don’t go toward anything. You know, when you and Abby fell in love, the longing was very clear, and I’m sure there were times when the anxiety was so much, you just wanted to put the covers over your head and hide for a while. And that was the right thing to do, because that’s what you longed to do in that moment. But when the covers came down and you went off and got a sandwich, you still long to be with Abby.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s right.
Martha Beck:
And your longing won’t abandon you. And if you’re longing not to have kids, do not have them.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Amen. All right, let’s get to Carrie Anne please. I love this. Carrie Anne.
Carrie Anne:
Hi, Glennon and sister. I was wondering if you could talk about decision making and/or knowing. I related so much to your description of how you handled and felt overwhelmed by big decisions in your past, Glennon. I have a lot of trouble with decision making. I always see every side and I feel paralyzed. When I finally make a decision, I struggle with regret, and just being okay with the choice. How do you make big decisions, and how do you access your knowing and differentiate it from feelings that can be fleeting or misleading. Thank you, Glennon.
Glennon Doyle:
Decision making, yes.
Abby Wambach:
Decision making, not something that we ever talk about in our marriage ever at all.
Glennon Doyle:
But also this distinction she’s making between feelings that are fleeting, like impulses versus real, like, how can you tell that? Because I’ve had some feelings where I’m like, oh thank you to the tiny baby Jesus that I did not act on those impulses because that was not my truth, that was something else. How do you know the difference?
Martha Beck:
Well, something else will feel manic and then something will always feel peaceful. One of the things, when I wrote this book about integrity, I was like, how do you know what’s true? And I realized that it’s when your heart, your mind, your body, and your soul are all saying the same thing. And what it feels like is like puzzle pieces clicking or locks coming into alignment. And I found after checking with hundreds of people, the thing that made most people feel a sense of true knowing was this statement, so say this if you’re listening or whatever, say it in your mind and feel what happens, the statement is, I am meant to live in peace. So just say that to yourself, I am meant to live in peace. And I’ve never met anyone. Not people, convicted criminals, psychopaths, they always still, when they said that there was nothing in them that said that is not true. I really believe that we are all meant to live in peace.
Martha Beck:
So, when this beautiful Carrie Anne says, I can always see every side of a question, that’s coming from cognitive stuff, that’s the head, and it’s her mind because she’s taking different perspectives. The problem is, if you’re taking all the different perspectives, they’re not anchored to anything. They say the mind is a wonderful servant and a terrible master. So, the mind sees every side and then drop down. Your cognitive mind is processing about 40 bits of information per second. Your whole nervous system is processing 11 million bits of information per second, I’ve heard even 180 million.
Martha Beck:
So, okay, here are all the sides, they’re in your head, now drop into the body. What feels like peace? What feels like calm, what feels warm and free? All the things we’ve been talking about. And what makes you, here’s something that happens when you get to the right choice, you will notice your body spontaneously go. And if you really watch, it’s so interesting, I’ll be messing around trying to make a decision, and then suddenly I hear it myself. And my mind is not what makes it happen because the body, there are more nerves going from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart, and they’re giving information. So, yeah, take all the perspectives, and then go by yourself and drop into your body and feel what’s warm and free and at peace. And you’ll always find the right answer.
Glennon Doyle:
I agree. Okay. Let’s hear from Morgan.
Morgan:
Hi, Glennon. This is Morgan. I just graduated college, and started what I was hoping would be a really great dream job, and it’s not shaping up to be. I think I’m going to stick this out for a year, but I’m wondering how I’m supposed to know if I’m doing the right thing. Thank you so much for your podcast, I listen to it while I’m doing my very hard job and I love your book. Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, sweet Morgan, she’s a little baby. Morgan is a little baby.
Martha Beck:
Oh, and she already knows, she just needs some grownups to tell her, if you’re saying it’s not shaping up to you, I’m going to stick this out, and it’s hard, but I can listen to a podcast by a woman who talks about breaking free from cultural pressures, so I’m surviving it with that. Sweetheart, you know, you know. You need to be more like Glennon, and Abby, and Amanda, and less like the people at your job, and you know. If I’m wrong, then you’ll know I’m wrong.
Glennon Doyle:
So, sister, ask Martha about your… because I feel like you have had questions like Morgan, like, is there an amount of time where you stick something out because you’re… can you put it in your words how you were saying before, sissy?
Amanda Doyle:
Well, yeah. I mean, I guess I’m wondering, is there part of things that are true? Like, if every truth makes us relaxed and every line makes us tense, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every truth is a hundred percent relaxed, right? Like that the process of going through it, so there’s momentary tension along a path that might be true to you.
Martha Beck:
Well, there’s a poem by Sara Teasdale called Barter, and it says, sell all you have for loveliness. It’s about the barters you make between what’s beautiful in your life and what isn’t. So I’m going to do an exercise with y’all, and you’ll see how this works. Say I asked you to go clean a disgusting, or in the desert, like driving across the Mojave Desert and there’s a rest stop, a truck stop, and the men’s restroom is disgusting. Sorry, that was sexist, but I used to have to clean restrooms and the men’s were disgusting, there was a lot of urine everywhere. And it’s baked in there, it’s 110 degrees in there. Now, I tell you, “I want you to clean this, Amanda, and for your efforts, I’m going to give you five shiny dollars.” Now, you say yes and go ahead to do it, how do you feel?
Amanda Doyle:
I feel like I’ve made a bad deal.
Martha Beck:
Yes you have. So I say, “Wait, wait, wait, I will pay you $50 cash on the barrel to clean that restroom.” You go in, you’re cleaning away for $50, how do you feel?
Abby Wambach:
Ugh, I know where this is going.
Amanda Doyle:
How old am I? Am I like right out of college because I might have taken that deal.
Martha Beck:
It’s you now.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, me now? No. No, you could have your 50, Martha Beck.
Martha Beck:
Okay. $500. How do you feel cleaning it for $500?
Amanda Doyle:
I mean, I might jump on that $500 deal.
Martha Beck:
Okay. What about 50,000?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. Thank you.
Martha Beck:
How about half a million?
Abby Wambach:
No.
Martha Beck:
Okay, Abby, 5 million.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
There you go, everybody has a price.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m still holding out. I do not like boys or their bathrooms.
Martha Beck:
Imagine you’re cleaning it. You get rubber gloves, you get hazmat suit on, you go in there, and there’s $50 million on the other side, not only would you clean it, but you would be like, I am having [crosstalk 00:33:41], this is amazing. Yeah. You’d do it with nice song in your heart.
Glennon Doyle:
And sister, I do feel like you have done the thing, the grind, the brilliance, the whatever, and you get so many rewards, pats on the head. You’ve been the smartest one in every room, best awards in elementary school, high school, college, winning all the awards, the best, the best, the best, the smartest, smartest, smartest, smartest. So it makes perfect sense, the culture was training you to continue this grind. This was the whole point of Untamed, like, we’re conditioned with all these little stakes and applause from the people on the sidelines and whatever to continue the cheetah run when actually we were meant to be in the wherever cheetahs are supposed to fucking be, I don’t know, the jungle?
Amanda Doyle:
And because your own self, as Martha Beck says, it will keep teaching you and teaching you and teaching you, it won’t let you escape, you can’t outfox yourself, this is why despite doing everything “right”, and all my gifts and prizes that I have accumulated along the way, I feel inexplicably fucking miserable right now.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
Yes. But you-
Amanda Doyle:
Because… Yes.
Martha Beck:
Here’s the thing, you haven’t wasted any time, nobody out there, everybody, you haven’t wasted a moment. So, what you get by being brilliant and smart, and enjoying all the prizes, and what Glennon does by being incredible and fabulous and best selling author, and what Abby did by being a world famous athlete is you bought a ticket that says, I am certifiably okay in culture now, everybody follow me, we’re out of this fucking joint. Because if you were just like lying on the street, going, “Hey, don’t do cultural things.” People would not like it. But if I say to people, “I have three Harvard degrees, don’t do a fucking thing you don’t want to do.” They’re like, “Oh, she has three Harvard degrees, and she goes, [inaudible 00:35:32].” It’s just a ticket, and use it.
Glennon Doyle:
Can I just tell you one thing is that in the middle of one of the breakdowns, one of the low, so many breakdowns, Liz made me write down what I was working so hard for, like what was my ideal dream. And I said, Abby won’t remember this, that I could not think of any dream that I wanted more than just to be in my pajamas with my family, my sister, and like three other women that I love and know, in cuddly socks and pajamas with nowhere to go. That that is literally it, that’s my entire bucket list.
Martha Beck:
Me too. And I’ve done a lot of it now.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Martha Beck:
Our whole family system is based around communions. First thing, morning communion, everyone gets together, we all get together in the same room, we all cuddle. Okay. Then we get up and we go do things in the world and that’s enjoyable. But then we have, it’s Adam that made this, this is going to sound awful, but it’s called wine time because Adam likes a glass of the good red every so often. And he made a rule, five o’clock is wine time, we all have to be there. It’s communion, you are not allowed to look at your phone or whatever. We drink something, I don’t drink wine, but we cuddle. After that, there is dinner, which is, it’s a very cuddly sort of dinner after which there is cuddling time. And COVID has been such a gift because nobody ever comes to interrupt it. But literally like, we are social primates, all we want to do is sit around and groom each other. It’s awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
God, I love it so much. Can I ask you a quick question before we stop, there’re so many people here who are listening and who are learning to come back to themselves, but they want to know how do they get their kids to never leave themselves, right? So like, how do we interact with the children in our lives, whether they are ours, or other peoples, or who whosevers, so they’re not conditioned to abandon themselves.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. It’s so simple and so counterintuitive, you say the same thing every life coach ever does, which is, how do you feel about that? They want me to do this. How do you feel about it? My daughter came home from a Montessori school and she was like all rigid. And I was like, “What’s wrong?” And she said, “Today, we learned that we must control our bodies.” And I was like, “Well, how does that feel?” She’s like, “Horrible.” And I said, “Don’t do it.” And that’s all I’ve been telling any of them at any time, “What are you doing? How does it feel, awful? Don’t do it. Feels great? Keep doing it.” You just let them do what they want to do. They’re not going to make the wrong decisions, they’re awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, that’s so freeing. One of the things that somebody, well, I’m saying, I probably read this recently, so it’s probably one of your books, so feel free to tell me this was your thing. But like, another thing we can do is stop gaslighting them all the time. Like, every time they walk into a room and they sense, they’re like, “What’s wrong, mom?” And we’re like, “Nothing. Nothing, honey. Everything’s fine. Everything’s awesome.” Or they walk into a room and they sense that we’re in a fight with our partner or something, and they’re like, “What’s wrong?” And we’re like, “Nothing. We’re awesome.” Every time we do that, we are telling them that their senses, what they were sensing were actually off.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And then they learn to not trust their senses, right? Because you’re always saying, come back to your senses.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. Come back to your senses, and be in integrity. I did this thing called the integrity cleanse where not only do I not lie, but I don’t even assume a facial expression that’s not sincere. Like, I get really hardcore on it. And when you’re in an integrity cleanse and your kids ask you why there is death and are you getting divorced? You have to find a way to tell them with love the truth, and the truth will set them free. Eventually hard truths will come, but they are never as bad as lies, not ever.
Glennon Doyle:
Martha, the hardest part of telling my kids that I was getting divorced was not telling them I was getting divorced. It was when Tish looked to me and said, “But you promised me you weren’t going to get divorced.” Why the hell did I do that? I remember sitting on a couch with Tish years before and her saying, it was one of her friends’ parents was going through divorce, and that little face looked at me and said, “Could this ever happen to us?” And Martha Beck, I looked at that little face and said, “No. No, that’s never going to happen to your family.” And in the moment that I told her her family was going to be split, her first thought was, “But you told me not that.”
Martha Beck:
And what did you say to her when she told you that?
Glennon Doyle:
I think in the moment I just said, “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you.” I mean, I don’t know, I didn’t have anything brilliant to say in the moment, but-
Martha Beck:
If you were to have told her, like, dig in, what was the truth? Why did you say that?
Glennon Doyle:
I just wanted her to have a security in the moment even when I knew it was a fake.
Martha Beck:
You knew even when you said it that it was fake.
Glennon Doyle:
No, because I don’t I think I knew it was fake. I mean-
Martha Beck:
There you go.
Glennon Doyle:
… I don’t think I knew it was fake. I think I-
Martha Beck:
Here’s the thing, teach your children that it is okay not to know because none of us really knows anything about the next five minutes. So, if you sit with them and say, you know what, I really believed it at the time, I really thought that was true, and I found out that I was wrong. And I’m really sorry that it hurts you, but we all get to be wrong, and a lot of what we believe, really believe, may turn out to be wrong. And that’s beautiful because it’s called learning. And none of us knows anything really, we’re all just walking forward in trust, but we love each other, and that’s the whole point. So, when the truth comes to me, I will tell it to you the moment I know it.
Glennon Doyle:
And when we don’t know it, we can say, I don’t know, to our kids. We can say, I don’t know, to our kids.
Martha Beck:
I have no idea. The more I learn, the more I know that I don’t know anything.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. But I love you, but we love each other, and that’s what-
Martha Beck:
That I do know with my whole self. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Oh my, the fact I love you so much.
Martha Beck:
I love you, guys. I want to bring you to our cuddle sessions that happen all day, every day at our house.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Thank you. We’ll be there with our jammies. Okay. We love you. Thank you for being here so much. We’re going to end with our podsquader of the week, and then we’re going to go. We love you. We Can Do Hard Things. We can live in some integrity this week. Let’s hear from our podsquadder, let’s hear from Jamie.
Jamie:
Hi, Glennon, Abby, and sister. My name is Jamie and I’m from Sacramento. All I want to say is this, my life is really hard right now. I have two kids that are two years old and under, my youngest is four months old. My partner and I, we feel like we’re barely hanging on every day is just such a slog. We are also both teachers, I’m a seventh grade English teacher at a public school. And the day is just so fast-moving that I finally get to lunch time, I have 30 minutes, and I have to go into a literal closet to pump where I don’t have enough time to eat a real lunch, so I eat cold, sad snacks over my pump in the closet. And every day I listen to your show, and it just feels like a warm hug, and it’s exactly what I need to give me the strength to make it through the rest of the day. So, that’s all I wanted to say. Thank you so much for making this beautiful gift for the world. Keep doing it. I like it, I love it, I need more of it, keep it coming. Love you all. Thank you. Bye.
Martha Beck:
Jamie.
Glennon Doyle:
Jamie. Oh, we adore you, Jamie. I just want to tell you that I too used to pump in the closet of a front main office of an elementary school sitting on a bunch of Xerox boxes, like those boxes of frames of paper, that is where I used to pump, like two feet away from all of the people walking in and out of the office on my lunch break, where I too would eat granola bars and sad, cold snacks.
Martha Beck:
Sad snacks.
Glennon Doyle:
Jamie, we love you. You, my love bug, can do hard things. We’ll see y’all next week. Bye.
Martha Beck:
Bye.